Kazakhstan rose from 81st to 73rd place in the 2026 Global Innovation Index and showed its best result in the last 10 years. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing Kursiv Media.
This was announced by the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Kazakhstan to the World Trade Organization.
Rating methodology
The World Intellectual Property Organization's ranking assessed 139 economies. Over the year, Kazakhstan improved its position by eight places.
The country took first place among Central Asian states and second among the 11 economies of Central and South Asia. In the group of 35 upper-middle-income countries, Kazakhstan ranked 17th.
Subindex dynamics
The innovation outputs subindex improved most noticeably — from 84th to 73rd place. For innovation inputs, Kazakhstan's position rose from 75th to 73rd place.
The index results were presented at the WIPO headquarters in Geneva during a preliminary presentation for permanent representatives of the organization's member states.
Permanent Mission's cooperation with WIPO
Throughout 2026, Kazakhstan's Permanent Mission in Geneva interacted with WIPO on individual index indicators, their calculation methodology and data quality. At its initiative, the organization's experts held an online consultation with Kazakhstan's government agencies.
Participants reviewed the country's indicators, data sources, missing and outdated statistics, as well as further areas of work. After the consultations, the Permanent Mission prepared recommendations for interested government agencies. Special attention was paid to the quality of international statistics and the timely reflection of Kazakhstan's data.
The Permanent Mission noted that this work made it possible to move from annual monitoring of the rating to analyzing specific indicators, information sources and necessary government policy measures.
Room for growth
Opportunities for further growth remain in financing research and development, cooperation between universities and business, venture financing, the development of innovation clusters and software, as well as in the output of scientific and technical publications.
The Permanent Mission will continue to interact with WIPO on the index's indicators and methodology. Government agencies intend to focus on consolidating the result and further improving Kazakhstan's position.
Previously reported
Earlier, Kursiv wrote that NERO Group and China's UBTECH Robotics plan to invest $440 million in localizing the production of robots with artificial intelligence in the territory of the SEZ "Park of Innovative Technologies" in Almaty. Of this amount, $340 million will go to the transfer of technologies for the production of humanoid robots, and another $100 million will be invested by NERO Group. Localization of service and humanoid robots is planned to begin in the second quarter of 2027, with the declared production capacity to be 1 thousand units.